Just in case you are completely uninformed, Yucatan will soon sport a new governor, a woman, whose name is Ivonne Ortega and she is from the formerly (70 years) ruling party of Mexico, the PRI. Everyone that knows her and is on her side insists she is very charismatic and just a wonderful person.

The PANistas are quite upset, especially the ultra-right catholic chest beaters in Merida; how this could have happened is beyond them. But, as someone pointed out as a possible exclamation: The PRI governments stole everything they could, but also helped a lot of people especially in the poor, rural areas of Yucatan, while the PAN government just helped itself to everything without giving anything back.

My candidate, Cholo, didn’t fare very well, but I suppose he served his purpose, which was to distract voters and votes from some of the other candidates. Ana Rosa, who would have won had she been the candidate for the PAN party, also fared poorly. The logic among the Ana Rosistas was that while they supported her, she had no chance so they voted for someone else, mainly Ivonne Ortega. If everyone who preferred Ana Rosa had actually voted for her, and not copped out, she would have probably won.

Conspiracy theories abound: The PRI was ‘given’ the Yucatan in exchange for less antagonism at the federal level where the PRI controls the Congress and generally opposed the president; Ana Rosa was forced out of the PAN party by the PRI who knew they could not beat the PAN with Ana Rosa and offered her a deal – in exchange for her dimission from the PAN governor race, a hueso, or political appointment within the PRI government.

As I hear more of these charming theories, I will be sure to post them for your amusement.

Yucatecans both local and imported are suffering from election campaign overload, and we can all be thankful that it will come to an end very soon.

You can´t see the trees or the walls of the city – or anything else for that matter – thanks to the virtual wallpapering of Merida with visual election propaganda. The TV and radio are also crammed with ads for the two main candidates from the PAN and PRI party.

Luckily for me, I don´t watch local TV (definitely pena ajena material) so I am not subjected to the assault as are some of Yucatan’s less fortunate citizens who, without the dish providing them with Sky, can only tune in those channels. And the radio, well I cannot thank Steve Jobs enough for coming up with the iPod, which in turn led to iTunes which led to Podcasts.

I think everyone misses the sight of trees without a purple and orange ‘X’ on them and listening to Fernando Ayora mangling English band names on 97.7. I can’t wait to see the trees again but I won’t be tuning in Merida’s worst radio station any time soon…

In a previous post on the Yucatan gubernatorial (is that even a word?) candidates, I don’t think I mentioned Cholo aka Hector Herrera, a regional comic/comedian who has been doing regional theater (read extremely local humor) for years now.

How could I forget Ana Rosa Payan? I apologize to her and all the avid readers of this blog who wrote to remind me that she was also contending in the upcoming gubernatorial race. Is that a word, I wonder?

Personally, I still think that Ana Rosa is, among all the mediocre contenders scrabbling to get their flacid buttocks into the Governor’s chair, the only one who actually has any cojones.

On the other hand, were I able to actually cast a vote, it would be for Cholo, whose campaign slogan is “Mas vale Cholo, que mal acompañado”. Loosely translated, this means that it’s better to go it alone, than accompanied by questionable character. And the ‘alone’ part (solo, in spanish) is changed to Cholo. Clever.

Much more so than the asinine, vapid promises and slogans of the PAN and PRI parties. These are (Xavier, PAN) “Te Va a ir Mejor”. In english: “You’ll be Better Off”. Is this original or what? No candidate anywhere has ever said that before! And is it saying that we are not doing so well now? According to who? A little presumptuous, I think. He promises ‘more jobs’, ‘more investment in rural areas’ and ‘better wages’ too. Will Yucatecans really fall for such empty, unreasonable and unfeasible blatherings? Is he really that boring and unoriginal?

The PRI is of course in the same boat, making the same promises, just phrased a little differently. While the PAN is admitting that things are not as good as they could be (and they themselves have been in power for the last few terms, hello) the PRI’s claim to fame is that they have a fresh face on the cover of their recycled pulp fiction paper back and that this is all it will take because she (Yvonne) has ‘passion for the Yucatan’.

So back to Cholo, who was recently photographed, broom in hand, sweeping the sidewalk in front of his campaign office. If you really want someone different, someone who really loves the Yucatan and will shake things up a bit, this would be your candidate.

For Governor of Yucatan, these are the candidates.

The names are in order of money being wasted on their “campaigns” complete with stupid, cliché’d, completely untrue and vague slogans and promises.

Actually this applies to the first two, since I actually haven’t seen anything from the PRD candidate, Cholo.

Another reason to vote for him!

Since this blog is all about bitching and moaning, I thought I would share with aspiring business owners the experience to be had with the idiots that ‘work’ in the federal government agency charged with the registering of trademarks and logos.

Called the IMPI (sounds like impy: small, monkey-like – which seems to govern the manner in which they proceed), the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Intelectual is the branch of government that will review your logo, trademark and so on and register it so that no one may copy it. Or that is what they are SUPPOSED to do anyway.

The real life case of one local tshirt printer demonstrates that their efficiency is dubious at best; downright retarded at worst. In an effort to prevent the piracy so common among tshirt printers, the owners of Mayan Xic tried to register some of their more popular phrases and slogans, not to prevent others from saying them or to get some sort of dominion over phrases used in daily speech, but to prevent other tshirt printers from taking the original idea and printing them up for profit themselves.

When you apply for copyright protection, you must first apply ($$) for a ‘name search’ which will reveal if anyone else has registered the phrase or slogan before you. In the case of Mayan Xic, the phrase UAY (Mayan expression of surprise or fear) was searched for. Since no precedent was found, a formal application was filed (more $$). 6 months later, a letter left the Mexico City office and was delivered in Merida another 3 months after that, informing Mayan Xic that UAY was not available because there was a precedent. What was the precedent? It turns out that the brain surgeons at the IMPI, in true office-cloistered, blinded to reality, burocrat fashion, found that someone (Hershey’s no less) had registered Milky Way (really)!!! So much for that. You want to argue the point? Well, you can register a revision of their determination ($$) and wait another 9 months for their probably negative reply.

One of the phrases was actually registered, and it was found that a local printer was printing up shirts with the same phrase. The lawyers were approached and lo and behold, it WAS possible for the IMPI to act. The only caveat? The local office – here in Merida – had no one specialized enough to actually perform the required verification visit to the establishment in question. It turns out that this f^&%$d up system requires you, the person whose registered design is being pirated, to PAY FOR THE IMPI IDIOT TO COME FROM MEXICO CITY!!! Yes, you – already paying taxes that should be covering this – must pay for his airfare, his hotel, and his expenses while he is here doing his job! Is this outrageous or what or is it just me?

Remember the IMPI has an office in Merida – which your tax money is paying for – with over 7 employees in plain sight, none of whom apparently possess that obviously rare additional job skill required to go to a business and verify your complaint. And woe is you if the address you have given him is incorrect; in Merida many houses and businesses are the same number, only the letter changes. For example if your pirate is listed at Calle 50 #500C and the ‘inspector’ finds that the business is actually at #500B you are out of luck. He does not have the authority to go next door, even if the pirated goods are hanging there in plain sight.

As usual, this information is posted with the hopes that potential business owners in Mexico will read it and realize what kind of stupidity and burocratic entangelments await them in this still – in spite of what President Fox might declare on visits abroad – very much third world country.